#and the best part is?

[whipbogard]

Just finished Gotham Knights

Many thoughts but here's a quick doodle of the bestest boy ever ❤

[techbonnie]

Every move I make my spine cracks like a popper, but its done!

inspired by the Drawfee Episode where they drew OTPs and that one person like drew a whole 15 panels on their OTP, about half way through I wanted to start drawing backgrounds and only some of them are shaded.

But please enjoy. I'm gonna go to bed.

[monsieurenjlolras]

you've heard of "quiet quitting," now I'd like to introduce you to the next level, The French Work Ethic:

Do exactly what you're paid for and nothing more

Absolutely refuse to be available to contact when you're off the clock

Never prioritize work over your own health, wellbeing, or family because that would be insane, it's just a job.

Have a little glass of wine

Take as long as you feel like for lunch

Deeply understand that work doesn't matter

Make sure your boss knows they're always your second priority ❤️

[darlingofdots]

my parents are on holiday in their mobile home

they're expected back this upcoming weekend

I just spent ten days in my childhood home to keep an eye on things

I have hidden 100 small yellow ducks all over the house

I am very excited for my parents to be back

[asteroidtroglodyte]

5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

10 years ago, I was watching my Potential and Opportunities dissolve and evaporate in an ocean of cheap gin and expensive whiskey.

But 5 years ago, I was in Rehab.

One of the exercises they had us perform was to imagine ourselves happy, 5 years in the future.

Many of us in that room had forgotten how to imagine nice things happening to them. A few snorted (well, I snorted), finding the notion that we’d even still be around in 5 years grimly humorous.

For about half of us, it was the last stop on the way down.

But I indulged the therapist. I was there, after all, because I did not want to die. So, I imagined myself, 5 years hence.

Happy.

It came to me all at once; an artistic remix on Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, reframed with myself placing food at the table.

Sunday Dinner At My Place, I answered, when it came my turn to share my fantasy. I was asked what food I imagined eating.

It’s not the meal itself, I said, it’s the implications framed around it. Sunday Dinner At My Place means that I have a Place. It means that I have Family that will actually speak to me and friends who actually want to see me. It means money enough not just to feed myself but others too. It means having the time to spare to take the time preparing the meal.

A lot of nodding heads all around me. A struck chord. Many people with no Place, in that place. Nowhere that would lament their leaving.

5 years hence, as I lay down to sleep in my Home, with my Wife and my Son, surrounded by my Art and my Flowers, I reflect.

It was a long road. It was hard. We lost people. So many people. There were long days and long nights and hospital stays. Angry arguments with ghosts. I changed, in ways I never hoped for, or expected. Good ways, finally, for once. Slowly, against the backdrop of a world in chaos, I found my mind.

Sometimes, My Wife wondered aloud, what she did to deserve me. After some stumbling with my feelings, I eventually settled on an answer.

I’m a Rescue.

She gave me a Home.

And, so, I gave her a Family.

It seemed fair

This Sunday, my folks, which whom I have not had a shouting match in years, will come over for dinner. We will cook and eat together. My Friend became My Wife, and she took a piece of me and with it she made Our Son. There will be many hugs, and no violence. Good Things Happened.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t know what the future holds.

don’t give up yet, ok?

It could get good, even.

[nyaa]

[haroldhighballjordan]

sometimes I randomly think about the time a girl posted in this girls only Facebook group I’m in telling everyone how she broke up with her boyfriend and he lied saying that he lost the spare key she gave him, only to then break into her apartment when she wasn’t home and steal the cat they’d adopted while they were together, but then he denied having done this and she didn’t really have proof that he took the cat since he wouldn’t let her come into his place and look for it. And then another girl saw this post and knew her ex-boyfriend, and she was like “girl. I used to hook up with your mans back in xxxx and I still have his number. If you want, I’ll hit him up and get him to invite me back to his place and see if your cat’s there.” And the OP was like “bet.”

So this woman hit up homie dog, asked him out for drinks, went home with him, slept with him, and then woke up in the middle of the night and TOOK THE CAT. Like she had only said that she would confirm if the cat was there but then she took it upon herself to steal this woman’s cat back. Like she full on Trojan horsed this man and then hit up homegirl like “I got the goods. Where you wanna meet.” And then the two of them posted a photo of them together with the cat to the group.

And I just think women supporting women is so beautiful.

[hinamie]

10 years later

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[probablybadrpgideas]

Circle of protection against capitalism

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I think the reader's response to this post is probably going to either be "That's incredibly minor" or "Holy shit YES I'M ALSO PROUD", depending on people's personal experiences with academia, but:

Today I am incredibly proud of one of my students.

In the interests of disguising identities, let's call them Ceri. Ceri is one of my third year undergrads (meaning their final year, for anyone unfamiliar with UK uni systems.) They transferred to us last year, and within two weeks I was giving them the contact info to get to Student Services and get themself screened for ADHD; they have some mental health struggles, but I clocked pretty quickly that they STRUGGLE with procrastination, and punctuality, and attending 9am lectures in particular. Naturally, as is the way of my people, it took them a further four months to remember to go to the screening. Lol. Lmao. Rofl, in fact.

But, they did it eventually! Their screening lit up like a Christmas tree at the ADHD section, and they got a free laptop and optional one week extensions and a study support worker named Claire. This has helped tremendously, and although mental health + until-then-unsupported ADHD meant their academic profile had slid sideways somewhat, with the new tools available and a couple of resits they passed the year and hit this year running.

Until, that is, the last fortnight.

Now, I take them for a Habitat Management module that has two assessments: an academic poster presentation before Christmas, and a site-specific management plan in May. Naturally this means we are at that happy point in the year for the poster presentations. I give out the briefs at the start of the year, so they've had them since October; I've also been periodically checking in with them all for weeks, to make sure they don't have any major burning questions. The poster presentation was to pick a species reintroduction project, pull the habitat feasibility study out of it, and then critique that study; Ceri chose to look at the hen harrier reintroductions proposed for the southern UK. All good.

Which brings us nicely to today! Ceri's presentation is scheduled for 2.30. At 11am-1pm, I am lecturing the first years on Biodiversity, while Ceri is learning about environmental impact assessment with a colleague I shall call Aeron. This means we are separately occupied during those same hours.

Nevertheless, Aeron messages me at about 12.

"I think Ceri needs to see you after your lecture," he writes. "They're panicking, I genuinely think they might cry. I'm worried. Are you free at 1?"

I say I am. At 1, I get lunch and sit in the common area; Ceri comes to see me. To my personal shame, imagine all of the following takes place while I stuff my face with potato.

Now: this part is going to be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has ever tried higher education with ADHD, especially unmedicated. It certainly was for me. All I can say is, I never had the courage to take the step here that Ceri did.

"I have to confess," they said quietly, and Aeron was right, they were fighting back tears. "My mental health has been so, so bad for the last fortnight. I've left it way, way too late. I don't have anything to present."

"Nothing at all?" I asked.

"I've been researching," they said helplessly. "I found loads on the decline of the hen harrier. But it wasn't until last night that I finally found a habitat feasibility study to critique. Generally... I've been burying my head about it, and it just got later and later. I thought I should come in for Aeron's lecture, and I should at least tell you."

This part is a minor thing, right? But honestly, I remember being in the grip of that particular shame spiral. I never did manage to tell my lecturers to their faces. I just avoided. I honestly can't imagine having the courage it took them to come in and tell me this, rather than just staying home and avoiding me.

"I think..." they said hesitantly, "I know I can submit up to a week late, for a capped mark. I think I need to do that, and apply for extenuating circumstances. But then I'll have both Aeron's assignment and yours due at the same time."

Which meant they would crumble under the pressure and likely struggle to pass both; so me, being as noble and heroic as I unarguably am, stopped eating potato and said, "Let's make that plan B."

(It was good potato. I am a hero.)

So, we made plan A: I moved their timeslot to 4.30, giving them three and a half hours. The shining piece of luck in this whole thing was that this was the crunch time assignment - if it had been Aeron's, they'd have had to try and write a 3000 report in that time. But for me, all they had to write was an academic poster, and those things are light on words by design. We found them a Canva template, and then we quickly sketched out a recommended structure based on the brief: if it's habitat feasibility, look at food availability, nesting site availability, and mortality risks in the target release site. Bullet point each. Bullet point how well the study assessed each. Write a quick intro and conclusion. Take notes as you go, and present the poster itself at 4.30.

"You think I should try?" they asked doubtfully, looking like I'd just asked them to go mano-a-mano with a feral badger.

"If you run out of time, so be it," I said. "But your brain is trying to protect you from a non-existent tiger. That's why you've procrastinated - it's been horrible, and you've been shame spiralling, and your brain is trying to shield you from the negative experience; but it's the wrong type of help for this situation! So while you're sitting there working on it, hating life, every time your brain goes 'This is hopeless, I can't do it', you think right back 'Yes I can, it just sucks.' And you carry on. Good?"

"Good," they said. "I'm going to mainline coffee and hole up in the library. Enjoy your potato."

And then, of course, I had to go and watch the other students' presentations, so that was the end of me being any help at all. I spent all afternoon wondering if they were going to manage it, or if I would be getting a message at 4.25 telling me they'd failed, and would have to submit late and hope for an EC.

And Tumblrs

Tumblrs

Let me FUCKING tell you

They turned up at 4.15, fifteen minutes early, wearing a mask of grim, harrowed determination and fuelled by spite and coffee, and they pulled up that poster and started presenting and yes, okay, I'll admit their actual delivery was dramatically unpolished and yes, they forgot to include the taxanomic name for the hen harrier on the poster and yes, fine, I admit that there were more than a few awkward moments where they lost their place in their hastily scribbled notebook but LET ME FUCKING TELL YOU -

They smashed it. It was well-critiqued, it had a map, it had full citations, it had a section on the hen harrier's specific ecology and role in the ecosystem, it had notes on their specific conservation measures. They described case studies they'd read about elsewhere. They answered the questions we threw at them with competence and depth. There was analysis. All that background research they'd done came right to the fore. They were even within the time limit by 15 seconds.

You would never have known they'd produced it in three hours, from a quivering and terrified mess fighting the bodily urge to dehydrate via tear ducts. After they left, the second marker and I looked at each other and went "So that was a 2:1, right?"

I caught up with Aeron downstairs and he was beaming. Apparently Ceri had seen him on their way out, and had gone over to talk to him. Aeron said the difference between the Ceri of this morning and the Ceri of then was like two different people; in four hours, they'd gone from their voice literally breaking as they admitted the problem, ashamed and broken, to being relaxed and happy and smiling.

"I reckon I've passed," they apparently told Aeron, pleased. "Maybe even a 2:2. There's things I wish I'd had the time to do better, but I'll be happy if I passed."

They won't know until late January what they got, because we're not allowed to release marks until 20 term days after hand-in, and the Christmas holidays are about to hit. But I'm really hoping I can be there when they're released.

But mostly, I'm just... insanely proud of them. I cannot tell you how happy I am. And I know, I know, obviously this is not a practice I would want to see them do regularly, or indeed ever again, and it only worked because they were fucking lucky with the assignment format, but like... when life is just punching you in the face, and you hit a breaking point... isn't it nice? That just this once, you pull off a miracle, and it's fixed? The disaster you thought was about to ruin you is gone? To get that relief?

Anyway. Super super proud today.

[thelostmoongazer]

gonna keep it real with you all i mainly got into cotl so i could have better context to read the TROD fic .......

The Rehabilitation Of Death AU belongs to @bamsara the comic scene is from chapter 16 lol

[northcodex]

[mo-mode]

Grover: Oh, you like war? Me too! My favorite part is *commits psychological warfare*

[blee-bleep]

took time out of this finals week to redraw this precious frame. i love marcille and izutsumi's big-sister, little sister dynamic, so precious

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

"Why did I do that?"

close up